Today In Pro Wrestling History: August 10th

Well we’ve got another weird list of articles because SummerSlams haven’t really got going yet. But there is some legit history and a little bit of everything except Lucha. Check out the list!

• CWF Fort Myers Show: Terry Bollea Debut (1977)

Terry Bollea made his wrestling debut at Championship Wrestling from Florida. There’s some dispute over if he wrestled only as Terry Bollea or under The Super Destroyer mask, but the opponent seems to be agreed upon that it was B Brian Blair, one half of the Killer Bees. Since they were both promising young wrestlers from Hiro Matsuda’s dojo, the finish was booked as a Draw just to make it effectively an exhibition.

• NJPW Sumo Hall Show (1989)

We got two pretty huge moments for the golden era of puroresu. Riki Choshu was the hero that took the title off of Salman Hashimikov a few months prior, but Vader needed to prove himself as the true Raid Boss of New Japan. Choshu’s iron will was getting rocked, in 10 minutes, Vader decimated Choshu after Choshu threw everything at Vader. Vader won the title back and began his 374 day reign, which is still the longest reign by a gaijin in NJPW history. The second moment was the catalyst in Jushin Thunder Liger’s very first real rivalry. Naoki Sano took the title off of Liger, and this really just added fuel to their rivalry that eventually came to a head in January 1990.

• WCW Hog Wild: WCW Heavyweight Championship: The Giant (c) vs Hulk Hogan (1996)

Hogan won the belt and created the iconic NWO spray paint belt, as he started his first World title reign as a heel. Hogan started a nearly year long reign of 359 days, as well as this being the initial experiment with Sturgis. The NWO was on the rise, Hogan won thanks to a ton of interference, but it helped to push WCW to the top of the wrestling world for 83 weeks.

• STARDOM X STARDOM (2014)

There were three important title changes that helped to define the early landscape of a young Stardom company and one fan favorite debut. The debut was that of Kris Wolf, a quirky wrestler who the crowd instantly feel in love with her gimmick and frenetic wrestling style.  As we’ve grown to learn that Threedom (Kairi Hojo, Mayu Iwatani and Io Shirai) dominated the early days of Stardom, the final three matches involved one of each. Mayu Iwatani was the Artists of Stardom Champion (trios) with Miho Wakizawa & Hiroyo Matsumoto, but lost the titles to Hatsuhinode Kamen, Kaori Yoneyama & Tsubasa Kuragaki. Then we saw Kairi Hojo & Nanae Takahashi take the Goddesses titles off of Kyoko Kimura & Alpha Female. The main event was the World of Stardom title, where Io Shirai was enjoying her 468 day title reign, she was the third champion of Stardom, with the second longest reign, looking to keep it going. She faced Yoshiko, where Io was a high flying babyface Ace, Yoshiko was known as the Heisei Brawler. A complete clash of styles, but Io was on a roll after 10 consecutive title defenses and such a long reign. In a 26 minute battle, Yoshiko managed to catch Io during her acrobatic offense with a devastating lariat and execute her Diving Senton Bomb, to seal a fairly impressive upset that started to lead to more of a generational shift between the veterans and younger wrestlers.

• OTT ScrapperMania VIII (2024)

ScrapperMania is OTT’s biggest show, held in Dublin’s National Stadium and we got a bunch of Supershow elements for their biggest show and their 10th year of activity. On the undercard we saw names like Mike Bailey, Man Like DeReiss, Robbie X and Nic Nemeth. But one of the notable title changes belongs to one of the most over acts in wrestling right now, Danhausen. Danhausen was challenging for the No Limits Title against Renzo Rose, who declared himself “immune to curses” leading into the show. So with half of Danhausen’s offense neutralized, he had to find other ways to combat an aggressive opponent, but thankfully had a manager, The Sem, to help him out a little. Renzo brutalized Danhausen and went for multiple pinfall attempts to end things quickly, but Danhausen stayed resilient. Eventually utilizing his Human Jar of Teeth by pouring them into Renzo’s mouth and executing his Very Evil Knee Strike, to win the match and the No Limits Title. Also, the teeth were allowed since…everyone has teeth, it’s not a foreign object, just more…objects than expected. So very legal, very evil. The main event saw Trent Seven defend his World Title against B Cool, who won the Loco Rumble earlier in the night. Trent tried to take advantage of the fact that B Cool was already in a 20+ minute match, but his aggression backfired as the referee was forcibly shoving him off the opponent because he wasn’t respecting the 5 counts. In the chaos that followed B Cool grabbed the physical belt and cracked Trent Seven with it before hitting his Brainbuster and winning the match. The locker room all came out to celebrate B Cool’s first World title win in his career.

Well we got a day with both Hogan’s debut and his first heel title run, Stardom’s shifting landscape was important for the company to start to break away from the shadow of AJW and become its own thing, NJPW had its own fun landscape shifts at the time and OTT bringing us legal teeth additions to prove Danhausen has won wrestling titles not just comedic moments of the night.